Cordially inviting all deserving tech bros
In July 2002, Google did something crazy:
They hired a 22 year old computer science student and made him the product manager for Gmail.
Gmail engineers were shocked.
Gmail was the most important new project at Google. Its target was 10M users.
And this guy, who was just out of college, would be the PM?
But they were overruled, because Google had a bigger problem:
Product managers.
Google couldn’t find good PMs.
Co-founder Larry Page rejected all the super-experienced PMs from Microsoft, McKinsey, etc.
They talked about management and strategy and business. Larry Page hated this.
He wanted Google PMs to be technical.
Otherwise how would they work with the engineers?
That’s when a Google VP, Marissa Mayer, had an idea:
If we want PMs with technical skills and don’t care about their experience, why don’t we hire computer science students from college?
Thus, the Associate Product Manager (APM) program was born.
Brian Rakowski, a 22-year-old CS grad from Stanford, became the first APM. He was put on the Gmail team.
Brian was scared.
How could he work with super experienced, super senior engineers on a super important project if they didn’t respect him?
Marissa gave him the answer: Data
She explained to Brian that a PM didn’t give orders to engineers. His job was to be helpful to engineers.
If he had an idea, first he should do a small test on 1% of users. If it worked, he should show the test data to the engineers to work on it.
Thus, data became the centre of decisions, not seniority or politics.
The rest is history.
Gmail was a huge success.
APM program was a huge success.
The first APM, Brian, was a huge success. He’s currently the Vice President of Product Management at Google!
Talking product sense with Ridhi
9 min AI interview5 questions
Lol the moment u needed a 20yr old proof of someone else's life to talk about your worth, you showed how worthless you folk in our country are. 🤦
In our nation, the reality is technically sound computer science grads don't take up the crappy job of product management. Only ones that get into the PM jobs are low quality graduates incapable of any real job in tech industry and these new well funded startup companies decided to do a cheap mimicry of Google. And voila Indian cheap variant of product managers were born! Good quality graduates are passionate about building something of substance. They are not even looking at these respect less jobs.
You talk about PMs being technical, data driven etc... But are you dumbos even technical? Go check PM profiles of Flipkart which unfortunately started the APM program. Some random chemical engineer who didn't like his life decided to do MBA and then voila out of college is a pretty APM from Flipkart. Worse it's filled with Bits Pilani kids not even remotely connected to computer science to be PMs. Such is reality. By contrast Amazon has a slightly better breed. Experienced data driven folk from Mu Sigma, experienced engineers are the prominent Product Manager profiles there. And the results are good as well.
And a gem thing about MuSigma is it takes these non CS heads itself but then teaches then Data Engineering, Analytics and AI professionals apart from turning them into exceptional consultants. Yeah they first teach them substance not like you no know nothing PMs. There are many like that as well Fractal for eg. So non tech folk can add value, but they should first learn it. Build things for real. And then yes, there is no difference. That's when they might be ready to build roadmaps.
So no, you are in India, don't bring in Larry Page or Marissa to justify yourself. They will spit on you for ruining their program. APM program in India is drilling out a cohort of very weak quality professionals in our country.
*stress on just the 'slightly' better part of Amazon. Trash exists everywhere🤦
Why are you assuming that anyone who is not from musigma and is a PM has not spent time and effort to learn tech or are atleast literate enough to understand the business and tech side of things?
I stopped reading after Marissa Mayer
I wonder if she cares 🫠
I think you are reading way too much into it.
You can have a kickass PM and engineering team with all the fancy qualifications and experience but you can still end up with a mediocre product.
Luck/timing/place matter way more than we give
And even if everything works out, your shareholders may sell it to some big tech company which will come in and destroy everything you build because it threatens there business.
To all the deserving tech bros, who understand tech and product better than Marissa Mayer and Larry Page. And know for a fact that PMs are useless and are only adding value if they have built a business and/or startup of their own.
I really wanna see you DESERVING tech bros build a successful product with your better than Larry and Marissa kinda vision and understanding of the tech industry 🤨
Yes I’m looking at you @CheckOut
Let me take you to Egypt. Go and dig up a 10000+ year old pyramid to see if you get examples of your worth as a product manager. Why restrict to just couple of decades old....
Was it self promotion?
It’s mainly intended for certain cohorts of devs that I’ve seen blurt mean shit about why PM is a useless role and how people need to establish their value by build a startup or product of their own before becoming a product manager.
I believe that the DEV PM-DA DESIGN combo when run effectively within the org can lead to valuable products being created. But each of the roles have their own unique characteristics, strengths, weaknesses and disparate challenges. It’s important that none of the roles be undermined and their value be appreciated within and outside the org.
Wow! Great article. Coordinating the response from the target audience with the developers is truly key to how PMs can develop user friendly products. Really hope this culture develops in India as well.
Ok what opinion i have is tech landscape is changing more rapidly nowadays as compared to what it was when APM program has started at Google, earlier there wasn't much rapid devlopment and trend changing artificial intelligence, it was but not at that pace, so even the folks who were from great b schools could break to product management and even Sundar pichai did that after his MBA . Second thing is I myself a mechanical engineering student who is about to graduate and planning to get into product and I'll never want to be that pm who doesn't know tech , most of the times as a product manager you are not at the core but you are binding the core , so atleast you need to have some great knowledge of either software development, analytics or ux design in a proficient way because you can't walk away by saying that you know business and scaling the product by working with multiple stakeholders, you should know design and analytics together. Because if something bad happens tomorrow, product managers will get effect first, as a PM if we can't get better in writing codes then atleast design, analytics and artificial intelligence should be our weapon whether u r from business school, chemical engineering, CSE or mechanical